>>5827374>>5827393>>5827399>>5827441>>5827456>>5827798>>5827927“Alright,” you said with a sigh of resignation.
Izirina’s excitement was palpable, a wide smile spreading across her face. Fearful o disappoint her, you quickly tamped down on that.
“Just… Stay back for now,” you instructed Izzy. “This hill’s guarded by the spriggan within the old maple. He keeps court here. It’s HIM that can give you permission, not me.”
She nodded, and hurried down the hill so fast she lost her footing and slid the rest of the way. You held back a laugh, but couldn’t sop your own smile from growing. IT really WAS nice to see the dour girl happy about things in life, rather than only about the prospect of abandoning life altogether… And she WAS quite a skilled baker. You hoped that it would be enough.
Dusk arrived, and by the dim half-light, queer shadows spread. Though you had not attended a fairy court in three years, you well remembered the way, and you experience with reaching into the elemental planes, and with peering into the minds, bodies and souls of the living, kept your sorcerous senses sharp. You materialized the <Faerie Fire> to illuminate the space, setting motes of it to burn in he corners of this place. You were heedless of the foliage, for it cast no heat, nor mundane light for that matter; it reflected only off those things which occupied the space between spaces.
Small and spritely things, and golden-haired spirits of the field, and greyish dwarf-like things emerged from where they had been dwelling, just beyond regular perception, and greeted you like old friends—which, true, they were, but they were immediately more preoccupied in divvying up your offering, or in swarming about Muffins to pet or poke at his faces and titteringly evade his retaliation. From the hollow of the old maple tree starched out a long and gnarled limb, though, and they parted for that and let its owner pluck his preferred piece of candied confection, withdrawing it into the tree. You followed the sound of satisfied crunching, and eventually the spriggan emerged, his head full of the greens and yellow leaves of an early, hot summer.
“So you’re back, little half-an-elf,” he greeted you. “It has been some time.”
“I’ve been busy,” you apologized. “I hope you’ve been well?”
